The Challenge
GBS needed a company-wide knowledge base that felt as easy to navigate as a website — while remaining maintainable as the organization grew. The existing setup had evolved organically over time, making documents difficult to find, ownership unclear, and external collaboration unstructured. The team needed a system that worked for both internal staff and external guests without compromising governance.
The Approach
The engagement focused on designing a Notion-based document management system with a clear separation between backend infrastructure and frontend user experience. On the backend, documents were stored in dedicated databases and enriched with structured metadata — including category, target group, and status. On the frontend, a consistent multi-level information architecture guided users from overview to categories to individual documents, with logic built in to reduce unnecessary clicks.
A key part of the engagement was designing controlled guest access — defining what to share, how to invite external collaborators without converting them into paid members, and how to manage permission levels so guests could contribute without compromising the system structure.
What Was Built
The final system included reusable page templates, practical editing guidelines, and a structured handover process so the internal team could maintain the knowledge base independently from day one. Navigation logic was designed to surface the right document with minimal clicks — including direct-open pages for categories containing a single document.